Scottish Festival

This weekend we visited a Scottish festival in town. We had a really fun time. There were Highland Games, lots of piping, LOTS of men in kilts, harp shows, Scottish foods, plenty of tartans and a dog show. Not sure about the dog show bit, but the rest was quite fun.

First we visited the Highland Games. I saw three different games: Sheaf Toss, Tossing the Caber, and Tossing the Hammer.

Sheaf Toss
This sheaf is a bag containing 16 pounds of rope. Traditionally, it is filled with hay. I think that the hay bag fell apart too easily and was larger, so they have modified the bag. It is lifted and thrown with a three-tines pitchfork. The sheaf must clear a cross bar without knocking it down, but it’s OK if it rides the bar while falling to the other side. After each round, the height of the cross bar is raised. In this photo, the cross bar is above the top of the photo.

Yes, this man is wearing a kilt. He was actually quite cute, but you can’t tell from the photo because it was taken with Froggy-Half’s cellphone.

Those little people in the background were Tossing the Caber, basically throwing a huge log.

These guys were the from one of the Pipes and Drums bands. The two guys in the background are playing bagpipes.

And one more Celtic band with a bagpipes guy in a kilt:

The Celtic Harp show was really great, but my picture isn’t so great.

I also got to try a Scottish Egg for the first time. It was quite good, so I found a recipe that I will try to use at home.